Area student to speak on sex trafficking at St. Mark's Youth Sunday

Westminster Choir College senior Ashante Taylorcox
will speak on her efforts to combat sex trafficking
at St. Mark's Church on Sunday.

Ashante Taylorcox will speak at Youth Sunday December 29 at St. Mark's Episcopal Church, addressing the issue of sex trafficking and abuse and her efforts to combat it through her charity, The Akun Project.

A senior at Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, Ashante herself is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.

Ashante will be making her second trip to Cambodia the following day to do some serious work that she will share in her talk. She is developing a new program for survivors of sex trafficking.

Ashante is the founder and president of The Akun Project, which works with the Cambodian Kids Foundation to put an end to this heinous crime and bring new life to its victims. A music major, Ashante will be doing research on the role that music can play in the healing of human trafficking victims, specifically sex trafficking victims, and the way music can be used to address their trauma.

Her focus is twofold:

• To start and manage a song-writing group to help survivors address their past trauma and abuse through song, empowering them to reclaim their voice that was once trapped in a world that so persistently silenced them; and
  
  
• To lay the ground work for the nonprofit organization she hopes to establish, utilizing art-based music therapies for sex trafficking survivors.

Ashante plans to move to Cambodia after she graduates in May 2014 to continue the project and to work on her nonprofit which will be based in Cambodia.

St. Mark's Episcopal Church is at 1430 Park Avenue (at the South Plainfield town line). Parking is available in the church lot. The service starts at 10:30 AM.

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-- Dan Damon [follow]

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